The Use of Hypnosis to Enhance Recall

Dywan, Jane; Bowers, Kenneth S.

doi:10.1126/science.6623071

Cited by 129 publications

(84 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…What is needed is an experiment in which recall criteria are varied across groups of subjects who recall while under hypnosis. Perhaps changes in recall criteria do affect hypnotic recall, as suggested by Klatzky and Erdelyi and others (Dywan & Bowers, 1983).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…Consider the problem of whether or not hypnosis improves memory retrieval (Smith, 1983). Some students do indeed show that subjects who are hypnotized recall more under this state than do control subjects given similar instructions but not hypnotized (e.g., Dywan & Bowers, 1983). However, in this study, subjects in the hypnosis condition also produced more false memories, leading the researchers to conclude that the higher rate of recall under hypnosis was probably an artifact produced by a lowering of the criterion for acceptability under hypnosis.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Recall criterion does not affect recall level or hypermnesia: A puzzle for generate/recognize theories

1985

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Subjects studied a mixed list of 70 words that varied in imagery value and then received three successive tests. Also varied were instructions given to subjects prior to list presentation (imagery or semantic rehearsal) and the type of recall test (standard free recall, an uninhibited-recall procedure in which subjects were encouraged to free associate and to guess while recalling the list, and a forced-recall condition in which they were also told to write a large number of responses to fill the allotted spaces). Recall improved across the three tests in all conditions, but the improvement was greater for high-than for low-imagery words. In addition, hypermnesia (the improved recall across tests) was shown to occur following semantic rehearsal instructions as well as imagery instructions and to occur with low-imagery words, contrary to the imagery hypothesis of the effect. Most importantly, the large variation in recall criterion produced by manipulating instructions at test (as measured by intrusions) did not affect the overall level of correct recall or the magnitude of improvements across tests. Apparently, the assumption of generate-recognize theories that people generate much more information in free recall than they produce (due to a stringent criterion for recognition of the generated material) is false.Hypermnesia refers to the improvement in recall across repeated tests. The term was introduced into the modern literature by Erdelyi and Becker (1974) as a replacement for the term reminiscence (used by Ballard, 1913, in describing his experiments), because reminiscence had come to have multiple meanings. Some researchers used reminiscence to refer to absolute improvements across tests, whereas others applied it to recall of events that were forgotten on one test but recovered on a later one. (This latter sense was the one originally used by Ballard.) In this paper we retain the usage, suggested by Roediger and Thorpe (1978), of reminiscence as recovery of previously forgotten items on a later test (intertest recovery) and hypermnesia as the absolute increase of recall across tests (when intertest recovery exceeds intertest forgetting).The finding of improvements in recall across repeated tests has suffered several reversals of fortune in this century, with some researchers finding it and others not (see Woodworth, 1929, pp. 63-68, and McGeoch & Irion, 1952, pp. 140-148, for the early history). However, in recent years the procedure introduced by Erdelyi and his colleagues has provided a reliable method for demonstrating and studying the phenomenon (e.g., Erdelyi & Becker, 1974;Erdelyi, Buschke, & Finkelstein, 1977;Erdelyi, Finkelstein, Herrell, Miller, & Thomas, 1976 successive recall tests of 7-min duration each. Some of the main findings to emerge from Erdelyi's research cited above are that: (1) recall improves for pictures but not for concrete words across the three tests; (2) study of concrete words following instructions to image the words produces hypermnesia; and (3) generating words at study fr...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Recall criterion does not affect recall level or hypermnesia: A puzzle for generate/recognize theories

1985

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“…However, some concern has been raised lately over the possibility that the cognitive interview merely affects the report criterion (i.e., it renders it more liberal relative to a standard interview) and has no effect on the accessibility of memory traces (see, e.g., Fisher, 1996;Higham & Roberts, 1996;Memon & Higham, 1999;Memon & Stevenage, 1996; press, for discussion). Similar claims have been made regarding the effect of hypnosis on memory performance (e.g., Dywan & Bowers, 1983;Klatzky & Erdelyi, 1985); that is, hypnosis serves merely to increase the amount of information provided in the memory report, not to make memory traces more accessible. Despite all this concern, however, there is no well-accepted analytical tool or method that can be used to gain an estimate of report bias in situations in which reporting is optional.…”

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confidence: 80%

Strong cues are not necessarily weak: Thomson and Tulving (1970) and the encoding specificity principle revisited

Higham

2002

Mem Cogn

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Performance on tests in which there is control over reporting (e.g., cued recall with the option to withhold responses) can be characterizedby four parameters: free-and forced-report retrieval(correct responses retrieved from memory when the option to withhold responses is exercised and when it is not, respectively),monitoring (discrimination between correct and incorrect potential responses), and report bias (willingness to report responses). Typically, researchers do not examine all these components in cued-test performance; blanks are sometimes counted the same as errors, meaning that the (free-report) performance index is contaminated with report bias and monitoring ability. In this research, a two-stage testing procedure is described that allows measures of free-and forced-report retrieval, monitoring, and bias to be derived from the original encoding specificity experiments (Thomson & Tulving, 1970). The results show that their cue-reinstatement manipulation affected free-report retrieval, but once report bias and monitoring effects were removed by forcing output, retrieval was unaffected.

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“…Significantly also, in such cases, hypnosis also tended to increase the number of incorrect responses such that overall accuracy, as determined by the proportion of correct to incorrect responses, was not improved. In fact, sometimes the increase in incorrect responses was such that overall accuracy deteriorated (see, for example, Dinges et al, 1992;Dywan & Bowers, 1983). Research also suggests that hypnosis may encourage witnesses to incorporate more misleading information into their reports and to be more confident in their reports generally, regardless of accuracy, resulting in a false confidence effect (McConkey & Sheehan, 1996;Scoboria, Mazzoni, Kirsch, & Milling, 2002;Sheehan & Tilden, 1983;Spanos, Quigley, Gwynn, Glatt, & Perlini, 1991;Wagstaff, BrunasWagstaff, Knapton, et al, 2004).…”

Section: Hypnosis and Memory Facilitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hypnosis and the Law

Wagstaff

2008

Criminal Justice and Behavior

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The traditional view of the hypnotized person as someone in a state of automatism, possessed of transcendent powers, is still popular among the general public. This has obvious implications for legal issues concerning possible coercion through hypnosis and the use of hypnosis for interviewing witnesses. However, it is now the opinion of most researchers that hypnosis does not induce a state of automatism, and caution should be exercised when employing hypnotic procedures to facilitate memory. It is concluded that better progress will be made in countering public misconceptions about hypnosis, and in benefiting from research on the applications of hypnotic interviewing procedures, if more effort is made to use concepts and terminology that relate hypnotic phenomena to everyday behavior and experience.

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The Use of Hypnosis to Enhance Recall

Cited by 129 publications

References 16 publications

Recall criterion does not affect recall level or hypermnesia: A puzzle for generate/recognize theories

Recall criterion does not affect recall level or hypermnesia: A puzzle for generate/recognize theories

Strong cues are not necessarily weak: Thomson and Tulving (1970) and the encoding specificity principle revisited

Hypnosis and the Law

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